Paste Magazine's The 100 Best Anime Movies of All Time (2023 Update)

1985 film by Gisaburō Sugii

2010 Japanese anime film

1995 anime film directed by Yoshifumi Kondō

While the Saiyan Paragus persuades Vegeta to rule a new planet, King Kai alerts Goku of the South Galaxy's destruction by an unknown Super Saiyan.

2000 film directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo

In the distant future, a young cadet is sent to find and capture "Cosmozone 2772", a mystical universal Phoenix which possesses the power to rejuvenate the drained Earth.

Three decades after the great war between the humans and the Zentradi, the U.N. government is developing new technologies to use in their transforming fighter aircraft by running tests on the colony planet Eden. Military test pilots and former childhood friends, loose cannon Isamu Alva Dyson and the Zentradi mixed race Guld Goa Bowman, are selected to each pilot a new aircraft (Shinsei Industries' YF-19 & General Galaxy's YF-21) for Project Super Nova, to choose the newest successor to the VF-11 Thunderbolt variable fighter which is currently still in use by the U.N. Spacy military forces. Their own personal grudges end up disrupting the tests, and begin to wreak havoc on the program.

1998 animated feature film

Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo by an old bamboo cutter and his wife, a tiny girl grows rapidly into an exquisite young lady. The mysterious young princess enthrals all who encounter her. But, ultimately, she must confront her fate.

A mysterious suicide and a series of unmanned robot run-aways sparks off a Police investigation into the suspicious software on-board thousands of industrial robots around Tokyo.

To celebrate their graduation from university Kaori and her two friends visit Okinawa in southern Japan for a short vacation. At the vacation house, provided by Tadashi's uncle, a numbing stench awaits the girls, and can be traced to a horrendously deformed, legged fish that Kaori kills. More and more of these creatures appear and portend a horrific change for the animal life in the area. A phone call from Kaori's fiancé Tadashi in Tokyo quickly shows the scope of this epidemic, when he is also attacked by these mechanized fish. Kaori immediately sets out on an perilous voyage to find out what happened to Tadashi, helped by Shirakawa — a videographer in search of the truth behind all this...

2011 film by Hiroyuki Okiura

1985 OVA film by Mamoru Oshii

Upon reaching the train station to death, a dejected soul is informed that he is lucky and will have another chance at life. He is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Kobayashi Makoto, who has just committed suicide. Watched over by a neutral spirit named Purapura, the soul must figure out what his greatest sin and mistake in his former life was, before his time limit in Makoto's body runs out. He also has a number of other lesser duties he must complete, such as understanding what led Makoto to commit suicide in the first place and learning how to enjoy his second chance at life.

A peace treaty between the Earth and the Black World, a parallel universe of demons, is coming to an end. Two cops, Taki, a human male, and Maki, a female demon, are assigned to protect a diplomat who will help secure another treaty. A radical group of demons from the Black World are out to assassinate the diplomat and prevent the treaty; only the bond that forms between the two cops can save the Earth from destruction.

1986 film by Toyoo Ashida

2007 anime film by Masahiro Ando

Japanese anime film

2007 Japanese animated science fiction film

When Sosuke, a young boy who lives on a clifftop overlooking the sea, rescues a stranded goldfish named Ponyo, he discovers more than he bargained for. Ponyo is a curious, energetic young creature who yearns to be human, but even as she causes chaos around the house, her father, a powerful sorcerer, schemes to return Ponyo to the sea.